From rxpgnews.com
State officials make appearance in apex court
By IANS,
Apr 24, 2007 - 8:26:03 PM
New Delhi, April 24 - Home secretaries of 12 states were present in person in the Supreme Court Tuesday after they failed to comply with an earlier notice for filing their replies with regard to the life convicts languishing in jails in their respective states.
The officials appeared before a bench of Justice H.K. Sema and Justice V.S. Sirpurkar, hearing a public interest litigation - filed by advocate M.K. Balakrishnan alleging that thousands of life convicts were languishing in jails across the country because the state governments did not exercise their power to grant remission to those lifers.
The 12 states are: Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Goa, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Punjab, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Rajasthan, Tripura, Uttarakand and Jammu and Kashmir.
The bench took on record the affidavits filed by the home secretaries and dispensed with their personal appearance for future hearing. It also adjourned the proceedings by four weeks.
In January, the court took to task the states for not filing their response to the notice issued in 2004. Since even after a second chance affidavits were not filed the home secretaries were asked to be present in the court Tuesday.
The petitioner alleged that the state governments were insensitive to the plight of thousands of prisoners who had completed 14 years in jail after the award of life sentence to them and had unblemished record in the prison.
He said the state governments concerned had the power to grant remission of the sentence but for reasons not known, they were not exercising the same.
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